© Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesHeavy rain in the North Bay.
While rain was heaviest in the North Bay, the most surprising figures came in San Francisco where Tuesday's rainfall of just over three quarters of an inch marked the most precipitation to fall on the date since 1849 (the year of the earliest recorded rainfall statistics in the entire state) according to KTVU Channel 2 Chief Meteorologist Bill Martin.
Tuesday's rain also lifted monthly totals to make this the second wettest June since the Gold Rush Era.
One positive result of the late rain would be that the saturation of dried brush around the Bay Area should shorted the fire season in the region by about a month, Martin said.
The messy afternoon commute could also be blamed on the unseasonable rainfall as the wet roadways led to accidents and slowed freeway traffic.
In San Francisco, a branch of a tree weighed down by wet leaves split and fell on Hyde Street. The branch narrowly missed parked cars and temporarily stopped cable cars service.
"We just heard this large crash. My car was parked right here and it just missed it, amazingly," said Rooks Bernstein, who works at nearby Za's Pizza. "I can't believe that."
The CHP in Sonoma County said wet roads and drivers not adjusting to the rainy weather created big problems. Slick roads may have caused the driver of a pick-up truck to lose control and flip over in Highway 101 in Santa Rosa. The CHP said there were a total of 35 collisions in Sonoma County during the eight hours of rain between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m.
The storm also brought down power lines in Sonoma County, keeping PG&E crews busy.
The South Bay has had to deal with drought conditions for so many years that many people KTVU talked to said the late rain and brimming reservoirs seemed downright abnormal.
Tuesday's rain caps off a very good season for the Santa Clara Valley Water District. But the agency said it also shows how much the continuous years of drought has affected the public's point of view.
At one time the amount of rainfall the region has received and the rising reservoir levels would have been considered normal or just about average before 2006.
Now, normal means the South Bay is actually drought proof, at least for a while.
"Even if next year we have a fairly dry year, we would have reserves that are going to be carried over until next year," said water district program administrator Marty Grimes. "So our reservoirs will probably have a good amount of water left in them at the end of the summer."
But for some South Bay residents KTVU talked to -- drought or no drought -- the rainy season should be done.
"It's kind of terrible. It's June," said Cupertino resident Jessica Yu. "It's supposed to be sunny but when it's cloudy like this, it's really terrible."
Yu was not alone in those sentiments on Tuesday. Farmers in the South Bay were experiencing their own headaches from the unseasonable rain and cool temperatures.
For example, cherry farmer Ken Saso of Morgan Hill has had to adjust to the strange weather throughout the spring. He didn't want to deal with it during the summer.
Saso, whose family has run a fruit stand on Monterey Road for about 60 years, said enough is enough.
"We don't really need any more rain," said Saso. "We've had enough rain during the critical times of growing for cherries. A lot of farmers lost a lot of cherries. It's Mother Nature and it's a natural phenomenon that this takes place, so you just gotta gut it out."
Saso and other farmers who are tired of the rain should see some relief this holiday weekend, as the weather was forecast to warm up considerably with no more precipitation on the horizon.
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